Delayed due to rain, Nitrogen has final tune-up for Whitney
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SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Nitrogen put in her final tune-up for her start against males in the Grade 1 Whitney by working a half-mile in 48.77 seconds Friday morning over the Saratoga main track.
The work was delayed by two days because of wet tracks caused by rain, but trainer Mark Casse said he wasn’t necessarily looking for her last work to be anything special. Still, under Edwin Soto, she went her opening quarter in 24.87 seconds and her final quarter in 23.90 while being asked a touch in the stretch.
“She got away a little slow and I said to Edwin, let her pick it up just a little,” trainer Mark Casse said. “I don’t know how you could work any better.”
Casse has never been bashful about running fillies against colts. But in late June, when the decision was made to point Nitrogen to the Whitney, he wasn’t expecting so many of the top older male dirt horses in training to appear the race. The expected seven-horse field, which will be drawn Sunday, includes five individual Grade 1 winners – Magnitude, Sovereignty, White Abarrio, Baeza, and Antiquarian, as well as Phileas Fogg, who has won back-to-back runnings of the Grade 2 Suburban at Saratoga.
“Leave it to me,” Casse joked. “I didn’t know that everybody and his brother was going to be here for this. When you looked at the timing, it leads us to the Spinster [Oct. 4], which the Spinster is very important to us because I would like to get a race over the track at Keeneland because the Breeders’ Cup [is there].”
Nitrogen, the champion 3-year-old filly from last year, has done her best work at Saratoga. She is 3 for 3 at the Spa, including wins in the Grade 1 Alabama last year and, most recently, the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps by 12 3/4 lengths in June.
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